Schools are remarkable places because their focus – every day, week, month and year – is on the cultivation of young people and their capacity to find the best within themselves. Respect and hope for our students lie at the heart of everything we do at Geelong Grammar School. Helping them to discover and develop their strengths so that they will have the courage, skills and resourcefulness to live fulfilled lives is essential to our belief. Our commitment to education began more than 150 years ago in the spirit of learning’s great adventure. The foundation of our Timbertop Campus in 1953 and the introduction of co-education to our Corio Campus in 1976 added powerful new dimensions to our philosophy. We are dedicated to education that can transform a child’s experiences of the world. Our Positive Education Programme, incorporated in the curriculum across all four of our campuses, affirms our belief in the need for our students to start their journey towards autonomy from a position of faith, energy and engagement, to be able to exercise intellectual, emotional and physical energy, express creativity and joy, learn perseverance and feel hope as they grow. To have self-belief, to understand diversity and accept challenge, to act wisely, to be resilient are all essential to healthy mind, body and spirit. Our ethos from the very start has been to honour the integrity of our students by doing what we can to help them grow strong. Positive Education is part of our conviction that the engaged life, the meaningful life, is essential to happiness and to the equilibrium each student needs to continue life’s journey. It is a conviction of which I am very proud.
Stephen Meek, Principal
Exceptional Education
At Geelong Grammar School, we have been educating young people for over 150 years. Founded in 1855 and co-educational since 1976, our School offers exceptional education across four campuses, beginning with our Early Learning Centres at Bostock and Toorak, through to Year 9 at Timbertop and beyond to Year 12 at Corio. Our students are boarders and day pupils; they come to us from city and country Victoria, from interstate and overseas. Learning is a conversation with the world that never ends. We will challenge our young men and women. We will ask them to do their best work in the classroom. We will teach them to employ technology wisely. We will encourage them to embrace the exhilaration of sport and the imagination of
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the arts. We will urge them to respect our natural resources. We will help them to embrace community service. We will prepare them to explore and to enrich the world, letting their lives speak. We trust in their resilience, courage, optimism and virtue. We believe in their minds and their spirit, in their openness and energy and in their joy. We are committed to an exceptional Australian education. We are committed to our strong Anglican tradition and we ask each of our young men and women to have high hopes and dreams. We stand by them as they face the future. We measure our achievements through theirs.
At www.ggs.vic.edu.au/eprospectus you will discover our interactive online prospectus with links to additional information, video presentations, virtual tours and news at Geelong Grammar School.
Belief
What do we want for our children? Excellence is too simple an answer. We believe that great education understands the wonderfully human complexity of youth and accepts that students are not yet fully formed, that they need room to grow, change and adapt. Great education maintains optimism in the face of challenge and does not accept limitations. It believes in commitment and conversation and in pursuing the best for its young people – which is something far deeper, far stronger than a single word. Excellence is a standard we set for ourselves as educators. Our belief in excellence lives in the respect for our young people that shapes everything we do for them and every means by which we offer them support and guidance. It is to be seen in the dignity of scholarship, in understanding, in compassion and in the freedom of thought and creation that we ask our students to embrace through our partnership with them.
With four specialist campuses – Bostock, Toorak, Timbertop and Corio – our philosophy of education is dynamic and continuous, from our Early Learning Centres to Year 12. Each campus reflects our collective belief in the powerful energy of our Positive Education Programme, our strong commitment to the natural balance and perspective of co-education. Our young men and women are poised on the edge of everything that is promising about adult life. We want them to discover the symmetry of their own minds, to know what it is to feel intrigued and engaged and to leave us with a yearning for all the beauty that our world has to offer. We believe in the lifelong wonder of the human adventure and in the pioneer spirit that grows from self-confidence. We are committed to equality and opportunity, to the original spark of every child and to the passionate pursuit of a meaningful life. What do we want for our children? We want them to flourish.
The Fisher Library, Corio
Discovery
Our students are the focus of everything we do. We are committed to their evolution. We want them to be intellectually curious, responsive and persistent, committed and expressive, articulate and brave. We believe in the invigoration and fulfilment of learning to learn. We respect the privilege of seeing something precious and unique in our young people and giving them freedom to grow. Our academic programmes are vitally connected to the pastoral care of each child. We offer our girls and boys outstanding opportunities and we expect them to be taken. We form a respectful partnership – of adults and children. We understand that challenge. Academically, we are a non-selective school. We have confidence in our students and in what is possible in each of them. We ask them to value the richness of mind, to see quality in themselves and others and to accept that they belong to an entire world of intellectual discoveries. We enable them to contribute to that great inheritance. We believe, innately, that they will.
We have a strong faith in education that transforms and extends our students in vitally different ways. This is why we have developed our specialist Primary and Middle School Campuses: at Bostock, Toorak and Corio. It is why we are so committed to our Year 9 Timbertop Campus. And it is why we offer both the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) and the International Baccalaureate (IB) at our Senior School Campus at Corio. Here, the choice of diploma depends on our students’ ambitions and on the dimensions of each student’s talents. Every year, we celebrate the outstanding success of our VCE and IB graduates. Every year, we delight in the discoveries of the youngest students at our two primary campuses as they begin school. Every single step matters to us. Our classrooms are everywhere we go. Our lessons are for life.
Timbertop
Trust
We are a lighthouse School in Australian co-educational boarding. For more than 150 years, we have made the care and education of children our life. Our strength is our experience. We believe that co-educational boarding shapes our young men and women into vibrant adults. It prepares them for the dynamic of the modern world by enabling them to live and learn alongside each other, sharing the powerful experience of growing up together. We want them to have a sense of what is real. The wellbeing of our young women and men is vital. Each of our Units at Timbertop and our boarding Houses at Corio is the focus for a team of adults – teachers and house assistants who know their students well, who understand the strong arterial pulse of young life. Our Heads of House are responsible for the students in their care; in loco parentis, they stand by our children as they encounter the powerful joys and shadows, ebb and flow, of adolescence. A boarding House celebrates unity, creates its own personality and rhythm and generates its own warmth, like a family. It focuses on the identity and safety of each child,
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on moral values and consideration for others, on acceptance, justice and resilience. Boarding offers friendship, independence and the mutual exchange of trust. It challenges autonomy and character, patience and principle, charity and space, like a family. Our students bring to us their rich complexity. Our challenges will be mutual. We understand there will be mistakes and yet our expectations are high. All our students have responsibilities and duties – to their Houses, to the School, to themselves and to each other. Each of our students is asked to contribute – respected as an individual who will respect others in turn. At Geelong Grammar School, we gather young people together from different backgrounds, different cultures and different countries. We trust in them – to work and live together, to develop insights and abandon prejudices, to work for equity and honesty, to be surprised by newness and encouraged by the familiar, to look beyond the self and learn that other people matter.
www.ggs.vic.edu.au/eprospectus
Wisdom
We believe in the strong beat of our students’ minds – where every rhythm is possible. We believe in their hope and authenticity, in their sharpening perceptions. We understand their yearning for strength and freedom. We understand the vulnerability and fire of adolescence because we have not forgotten what it was like. We believe in the integrity of children. We affirm the vital duty of pastoral care. Pastoral care is about creating human connections, establishing clear structures and being persistent, explaining boundaries and building trust, enabling rather than disabling social intelligence and moral independence. It is about partnership and Positive Education, knowing when to speak and when to listen, encouraging resilience and hope. Pastoral care is the essence of our work. It is neither a
programme nor a strategy, for it nourishes everything we do, every day. We want our students to honour the privileges that have been given to them, to become independent and respectful adults. We want them to navigate with a moral compass. We want them to see the world as it is – to aspire to change what is wrong, to protect and revere what is right. We want them to believe in the radiant prism of the world. We want them to believe in each other. We ask them to have a firm sense of responsibility and to be inspired by goodness, courage and justice. We ask them to have faith in sanctity and spirit. We ask them to worship, sharing the humanity of all that grace and wisdom can bring them.
Everything we do here counts. What we teach our students in the classroom matters a great deal. So do the structures we define and the rules we set – about positive conduct and equal opportunity, about individuality and community, about restorative practice and transparent resolution, against drugs and bullying. The strong connections we create between students and adults, the work we do for community service and charities, our focus on regeneration, sustainability and landcare
projects, the intrinsic value of our Anglican Chapel services – all reflect our firm belief in the quality of our young men and women and in their development of heart, mind, spirit and character. At Geelong Grammar School, we understand the space between our children’s hopes and fears, between who they are and who they are yet to be.
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www.ggs.vic.edu.au/eprospectus
Inspiration
Our students have minds of their own. Their creativity breathes invention into this new century. We want to help inspire that invention. Art, Drama and Music help our students to speak in their own special voice, binding them to the rich inheritance of being, seeing, questioning the human, challenging them with concepts of beauty, compelling them to feeling and thought. In the arts we recognise a valuable mosaic of the world. We can slip free of its boundaries into expression of self.
The arts are for everyone. They revolutionise the mind, stir it to life. Art, Drama and Music shape our sense of diversity and newness. They challenge our cultural awareness, connecting us to others, refining our sensibilities, stretching our perspective. The arts test our sense of who we are and what we know. Our Art, Drama and Music Departments are committed to originality and audacity, quality and substance. We enable brave exploration in our students’ work. We introduce our
girls and boys to technology and craftsmanship, dreaming and planning, discipline and risk. We believe in giving them freedom to chart their own landscapes. We believe in focussing their energy, pride and belief into work that really counts. Exhibitions, dramatic productions and concerts are the fruits of their talents; satisfaction and growth are the rewards. At Geelong Grammar School, we help our students to sound their own rhythms, craft their own shapes – to find ways of expressing, proudly, what lies within.
Spring Concert, Corio
Energy
The ancient Greeks were right. A sound mind in a sound body is vital for wellbeing.
the disappointment of defeat and share the joys of success. It rewards excellence and it builds resilience.
Sport at Geelong Grammar School is about competition, energy, physical condition, moulding character and building friendships. Sport helps our students to take a challenging route to learning. We ask all our young men and women to commit to the exhilaration of physical fitness and to the powerful experience of belonging to a team.
We bring a depth and breadth of choice to our students. Our own members of staff train with our students as coaches and mentors, working towards the stamina of the body and the sportsmanship and dignity of the self.
Sport is about developing body and mind, extending the limits of both. It means striving to overcome obstacles and accept judgment, setting new goals in order to meet them, accepting that there are no shortcuts, learning to manage
Geelong Grammar School students compete at House, School and national levels. They compete out of passion or for the sheer thrill and fun of it. We want them to discover what they are good at and what they love. We want them to learn that commitment enriches everything they do.
Both our girls’ and boys’ crews have won Australian national rowing titles. We have a modern and extensive Equestrian Centre at our Corio Campus. We have a yacht club. Aerobics, athletics, badminton, basketball, cricket, cross-country running, diving, equestrian, football, hockey, netball, rowing, rugby, sailing, skiing, soccer, softball, swimming and tennis add rich variety to our sporting life.
The Handbury Centre for Wellbeing at our Corio Campus expresses our vision for our students – one that incorporates positive relaxation, personal fitness and sport in their development of wellbeing. At Geelong Grammar School, we believe that sport is about seizing opportunity – and running with it.
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www.ggs.vic.edu.au/eprospectus
Exploration
At Geelong Grammar School, we like to send our students out of class.
company, to feel a sense of achievement and to choose wisely – is part of what we do best.
We believe in new ideas. We believe in being absorbed. It keeps us positive, open, ready to explore and young at heart. It makes us curious and ready to learn. Growing up at school is about more than grades, assignments and examinations.
At our Bostock and Toorak Campuses, we focus on harnessing the wonderful energy of our youngest children, their eagerness for play and experiment. Timbertop allows us to stretch our horizons with new freedom. Our girls and boys are involved in a wide range of activities – such as hiking or working in our vineyard – and are engaged in community service and landcare.
Our co-curriculum programme is a central feature of our work. What we bring to our students outside the classroom helps them develop a special talent, discover an unknown passion or builds on existing strengths. Helping our students to learn constructive ways of using their leisure time – to relax, to commit to a project or to enjoy each other’s
At Geelong Grammar School, the opportunities for exploration are limitless.
Sailing on Corio Bay
Equestrian, Corio
At Corio, our range is broad: from cinema to life-drawing, dance to debating, scuba diving to silver-smithing, orchestra to theatrical productions, surfing to yoga. We understand the importance to our students of being free to be themselves. But with this freedom comes commitment and balance.
We help our young men and women to find patterns of interest and to develop a range of skills that may define the quality and richness, depth and versatility of who they will soon become. At Geelong Grammar School, we make time for our day-dream believers.
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www.ggs.vic.edu.au/eprospectus
Courage
Worm farm, Toorak Campus
It takes wisdom to see the world as it is. It takes courage to work for the world that could be, persistence to make good things happen. It does not take an adult to change the way of the world. A young mind can accept responsibility, remain persistent, nourish hope and seek wisdom. Our students have the potential to change everything for the better, to have gratitude for their gifts and faith in their own strengths. They have their own ideas about how to shape the future.
Community service is central to our belief as an Anglican School founded upon the principle of Christian charity. Community service develops the human experience of our girls and boys. It teaches them to give because they can, to have a firm sense of social justice, to be active in public life and to respect the environment.
The Lorne 160 fundraising project
Our students are involved in fundraising and service activities: they offer literacy support to students and visit nursing homes; they recognise the responsibilities of recycling, revegetation and conservation. Every year, the Lorne 160 project at our Corio Campus – concluding with a 160 kilometre run on the last day of Term 3 – supports local charities. Every year, determined teams of girls and boys plan together, devising activities to raise funds, seeking sponsorship, working for a world beyond their own, determined to do what is needed.
At Geelong Grammar School, we work with our students to build in them a courageous spirit for change.
Anzac Day Service, Corio
Newtown, Geelong. 3 year-old Early Learning to Year 4. Day students.
Bostock House Bostock House is our smallest Geelong campus, settled quietly in the leafy suburb of Newtown. Catering for girls and boys of three to four years of age in our Early Learning Centre (ELC), and from Prep to Year 4 in our Primary School, we are committed to helping our students understand that learning is part of a natural process which we all share. What is really important to us is that children believe school can enable and inspire them, that it is their own space. We want our students to be bursting with anticipation to come to school, to be inspired into talking about their day when they go home. Establishing an expressive, thoughtful and curious foundation for the evolution of our students’ minds is as important to us as making their early years at school both an enjoyable and enriching experience. Childhood is a fantastic time and we recognise that the first steps our children take as independent learners are momentous. Our curriculum acknowledges the importance of giving children a strong start in numeracy and literacy skills; equally, we are committed to their imagination, growth and inspiration. We value equality and inclusiveness – and we want our children to do that, too. Each member of our School community – from our youngest child to our Head of Campus – is intrinsic to our sense of who we are and how we work together to create a special place.
Bostock House is very much a child-sized school. Our campus is small – with small class sizes. We understand that children explore, play and learn most courageously when they feel safe and known. We shape our world to fit theirs. Our Early Learning Centre offers a full day programme, underpinned by the teaching of the world-renowned Reggio Emilia approach and energised by our belief that children learn best through first-hand experience. We want our youngest students to feel that discovery brings joy and pride. In our Primary School, from Prep to Year 4, we focus on creating strong relationships between our students and their teachers. We believe in getting to know our girls and boys, walking alongside them as they travel. Working with small children engenders flexibility, patience and respect. The early years can be the most important years of a child’s education. Our specialist subjects – Music, Art, Drama, Physical Education, Japanese and Library – support our foundation work with numeracy and literacy. We are committed to an integrated approach in curriculum development; children are innately interactive and creative and we want to inspire their curiosity. Swimming, cross-country, our whole school athletics day and excursions are important times for exuberant energy. Each year level has a special activity that forms part of our Outdoor Education or Camp Programmes. Children in Prep and Year 1 take part in planned after-school activities. Year 2 children spend a day bushwalking and a night at our Corio Campus. Years 3 and 4 children participate in a three-day camp in Term 4. Our students are given many different opportunities – to try something new, to stretch their imagination – to be the best they can be.
We encourage our parents to see that we are engaged with them in a partnership – committed to the education of each child. We welcome the involvement of family and extended family members at special occasions in our School life such as our Easter Service and Christmas Pageant. We understand the rhythms of family life, offering Before and After School Care. Trust, communication and resilience are intrinsic to our understanding of the best way to work with young children – and essential to our philosophy of Positive Education. Our Buddy Programme crosses all age levels, fostering a sense of connection between our older and younger students. Our Student Code of Conduct helps our girls and boys to understand the rights and responsibilities of living in a community. Regular Chapel services are intrinsic to our identity as an Anglican School; each class is responsible for preparing a service two to three times a year. Belief is a powerful impetus for the development of mind, character and individuality in our children. Exceptional education enriches children’s readiness to learn and their resilience to change and challenge. It helps them to believe in themselves, to be bold and joyful in their adventures; it teaches them to approach the world without fears about not understanding things straight away, or worries about whether their ideas are right or wrong. It gives their childlike resourcefulness and faith back to them. At Bostock House, we believe that our work with children is exceptional.
Daryl Moorfoot, Head of Bostock Campus
Toorak, Melbourne. 3 year-old Early Learning to Year 6. Day students.
Toorak Campus At our Toorak Campus – established in Melbourne in 1887 – we cater for children from three to four years of age in our Early Learning Centre and from Transition Prep and Prep to Year 6 in our Primary School. As educators, we see through children’s eyes. We understand their natural curiosity, resilience and energy. Our new campus facilities offer our students powerful freedom of space and, in that space, we help them to flourish. A good school becomes a hundred vibrant worlds, where children think and dream, reflect and explore, work and play. Children are innately resourceful, active, creative learners. We support the strength in our girls and boys, so that they are inspired to ask questions, become intrigued, take risks and develop minds that are brave and bold. We believe in the beauty of each child’s evolution. Our girls and boys take hold of learning with their own small hands, fired by the possibilities that we bring to them. We share their hopes. We honour their trust. We are committed to the wonder of all their discoveries, to the excitement of their learning, the vitality of their growth.
For children, confidence, happiness and trust are vital – right from the very start. Our Early Learning Centre in ‘The Pottery’, a lovely former home with stained glass windows, is where our youngest students engage in interactive play and enquiry. Our ELC, Transition Prep and Prep Programmes reflect the philosophy of the Reggio Emilia approach. They also reflect our understanding of the ways in which our children begin to see how the world – with all its pieces – works. Our curriculum, from ELC to Year 6, is committed to the Primary Years Programme (PYP) of the International Baccalaureate. As the first school in Victoria to introduce the PYP at all year levels, we believe in the powerful ways in which it connects our students to the vibrant world of learning. The PYP is based on a philosophy to which we passionately subscribe: that all children are naturally curious, that they are open to exploring concepts, thinking imaginatively and communicating cheerfully; that they possess unique integrity of mind, spirit and energy, which it is our work to develop as fully as we can whilst they are in our care. In our innovative new Glamorgan Centre, our open-plan classrooms are vibrant children’s networks. Learning areas are light-filled, carefully designed and connected spaces where our students read, listen, write, plan, do research and complete projects knowing that their peers, their teachers and the Head of Campus are all close by to take every crucial step alongside them. Our Music and Art studios, well-equipped Theatre and Science facilities enrich our students with opportunity. Language and Mathematics skills underpin everything we do in the classroom. Japanese is taught from Prep to Year 6; our School Library and Resource Programme fosters a love of reading; our multimedia centre develops Information Technology skills. Extensive Visual and Performing Arts Programmes inspire the joyous expressive freedoms innate to children: we proudly celebrate our work in Visual Art and Drama in our annual Art Exhibition and Year 6 Mask Performance; Music is enhanced by the Instrumental Tuition Programme as well as Choral and Instrumental Ensembles, festivals and concerts.
Our Physical Education Programme includes all students. Year 5 and 6 students compete in the Associated Public Schools Interschool Sports Competition – in a variety of summer and winter sports. Our Outdoor Education Programme encompasses students from ELC onwards. Excursions and camps are integral, from Transition Prep to Year 6, to exploration of the environment and the community. Positive Education is intrinsic to building resilience, resources for happiness and individual strengths. Our House system encourages our girls and boys to create friendships beyond their own year levels. The strength of our close community is enhanced by Religious and Values Education and by our attendance at Anglican services at St John’s Toorak, once a term. Our students’ curiosity is deepened through their openness to faith and wonder. The commitment of parents is central to our relationship with their children; together, we are focussed upon helping them to flourish. We welcome parents to our Family Camp weekend, and to concerts and performances. Understanding the demands of family life and work, we offer Before and After School Care. At our Toorak Campus, we understand the tremendous, vibrant life of children. We are proud to share their joys and stand by them every step of the way.
Garry Pierson, Head of Toorak Campus
Corio, Geelong. Years 5 to 8. Day, day boarding, weekly boarding and full boarding students.
Middle School At our Middle School at Corio, we cater for girls and boys from Years 5 to 8 as boarders, day boarders or day students. We believe that education is not simply about academics and the classroom – although teaching children how to learn is so important. Helping young minds discover and develop character, spirit and intellectual identity in the context of a community is the basis of our commitment to them. Our students stand at the end of childhood – and on the vivid edge of adolescence. We understand that this is a delicate balance. In the middle years between primary and secondary education, the relationship between independence and interdependence is complex; there is the desire for space and exploration and, yet, the need for support and the familiar. Our Middle School Campus is focussed specifically on these crucial years of growth. Our conviction is that young students learn best in an environment that promotes strong connections, where relationships promote self-esteem and confidence. This is the time, we believe, when children are like trapeze artists: what inspires their daring is the faith they have in a net that underpins everything as they leap, promising them support if their hands should falter. We are utterly committed to the courage of taking that leap – and to the gentle, resilient strength of our net.
We offer a variety of boarding or day options to students with three boarding Houses exclusively for Middle School students – two for boys and one for girls – and two co-educational day Houses. Our House system is intrinsic to the networks we create to ensure that our students flourish. Our academic programmes provide our girls and boys with the strong foundations they need to take pride in who they are and what they can do. Right from the start, we ask every student to assume responsibility for their learning, a responsibility they share with their class teachers and parents. We want our students to see quality and dignity in themselves and in each other; dynamic learning is fundamental to the discovery of individuality and self-confidence. In Years 5 and 6, core subjects are taught by the class teacher; electives such as Japanese, Music, Drama, Art, Technology, Health and Physical Education are taught by specialist teachers. In Years 7 and 8, other electives such as Chinese and French are also introduced as students begin to adapt more readily to the Secondary School landscape. However, the Core Teacher Programme in Year 7 – wherein teachers take two core subjects – ensures that our younger students retain the central relationships they need at such a crucial developmental stage. Sport promotes good health and playing sport is compulsory. Training is after school on two to three days per week – depending on year levels – with matches played on Saturday mornings. A wide range of sports is available. We have a modern and extensive Equestrian Centre. Our Handbury Centre for Wellbeing is a vibrant new space both for team sports and individual fitness. Our Outdoor Education Programme varies in intensity as our students mature. Year 5 students visit historic townships in north-western Victoria and Year 6 students have a four-day camp at Wollangarra Homestead – midway between Heyfield and Licola. Year 7 students attend the Adventure Camp at Anglesea. For Year 8 students, The Journey anticipates the physical challenges of Timbertop: they choose either the Great Victorian Bike Ride – covering almost 600 kilometres of rural Victoria in nine days – or the Murray River Paddle in their final term.
Offering our students diverse experiences is essential; we ask our young girls and boys to be active, not passive, in their evolution and to do as much as they can to sponsor their own explorations in discovering what interests, intrigues and inspires them. Our extensive Activities Programme runs after school two days a week. We also offer Instrumental Tuition in over 20 instruments, as well as Instrumental Ensembles, Orchestras and Choirs. The Years 7 and 8 Production in Semester Two is the major theatrical event in our calendar. Our Positive Education Programme aims to endow our students with confidence, persistence and resilience, contributing powerfully to their development of individual strengths. We enable our young students to give and receive support and to develop and sustain relationships within our community. Early adolescence can be challenging, a test of character as much as of the mind, yet its power of illumination is wonderful and what is learned can last a lifetime. This is the heart of our belief and we ask our students to share it with us. Commitment to broadening horizons, to awakening and sustaining a sense of spiritual possibility is natural to our life as an Anglican School. The Chapel of All Saints is a place of quiet beauty where our students come together during the week to worship. Community service is fundamental to our work in preparing them to enter into the world with humane, energetic vision. Our Middle School encapsulates our absolute faith in children to transform, respond, discover and grow.
Tony Inkster, Head of Middle School
Near Mansfield, Victoria. Year 9. Full boarding students.
Timbertop Timbertop is a uniquely beautiful place. Founded in 1953, it offers our young men and women a natural space in a sometimes unnatural world, rewarding their courage with trust and transformation. Our Year 9 boarding campus is located midway between Mansfield and Mount Buller, three hours’ drive north-east of Melbourne. A retreat from city life into the light and eucalypt of the Australian bush, it is where we give our students freedom to move and time to breathe. Isolated and private, our campus is more than two kilometres from the nearest major public road, with facilities – including a vineyard and fully functioning farm – spread across the gentle hills of a secluded valley. Our students are both protected and emboldened, making the tranquillity of over 330 hectares of trees and bush tracks leading to the mountains of the Victorian High Country, their own. Adolescent minds and hearts are precarious with self-knowledge. Here at Timbertop, we hand back to our students the chance to reflect, think and feel, to grow through their encounter with the powerful challenges and responsibilities we will give them. The essence of our campus is found in the strength of each girl and boy, in what they are able to learn and contribute – and that is why we are here. We are committed to discovery and growth.
At Timbertop, we believe in education that looks far beyond the surface. We work so that our students will be charged by intellectual energy, independence of mind, physical and emotional resilience, moral sensibility and awareness of others in a landscape that reflects their own natural force. Our students live in Units which are the essence of Timbertop. Rustic in appearance and surrounded by the bush, Units are like large houses, home to up to 15 girls or boys. Organising rosters and chopping wood for the slow-combustion heaters and boilers are part of the daily routine. Members of staff are responsible for pastoral care; however, the character of each Unit is very much the responsibility of the students who make it their own.
Regular exercise is integral to good health, self-esteem and wellbeing. Our running programme involves the whole School, staff and students, in cross-country runs every week on the bush tracks around our campus. The length and difficulty of the runs increase steadily to culminate, at the end of the year, in the 28 kilometre Timbertop Marathon – a special rite of passage that our students anticipate eagerly and remember with great pride.
Separation from television, telephones, emails, DVDs and computer games creates a radical new silence which our students convert to writing and reading letters and to conversation. Computer literacy is essential; however, technology cannot speak as powerfully as companionship. At Timbertop, electronic entertainment is not permitted.
Our young men and women spend between 60 to 65 nights over the year camping away from their Units. Physical challenges test character and resourcefulness, replenishing emotional maturity and deepening resilience. At Timbertop, the substance for learning is real – inside the classroom and outside: in the bush in the Alpine National Park, on solo hikes, in community and school service programmes or else in the farmland and fields that form our campus.
We are convinced that the greatest learning comes from the individual struggle to get things right. There are no short-cuts. Honesty, hard work and discipline lie at the core of everything we do. Academic rigour endows our students’ minds with the nourishment they need to flourish; our core subjects, including Outdoor Education Studies, are enhanced by diverse elective subjects such as Visual Arts, Music, Chinese, French and Agriculture and Land Management. We ask our students to honour their academic work as a reflection of their commitment to themselves and their own evolution. Our extensive programme of learning support ensures that each student is given that opportunity. An extensive Outdoor Education Programme is central to our vigorous philosophy. Our students learn to forge their own way forward – with our vigilance and care. Out in the bush, on the farm and in the snowfields, they must support each other, sustaining connections with their Unit members, their peers, their hike groups and their teachers. They will need to learn levels of discipline that evolve as powerfully as they do, developing responsibility and independence.
The Chapel of St. John the Baptist is intrinsic to our daily life; our student and staff community come here, together, most mornings, for religious services, student concerts, singing and shared reflections. With high, clear windows set against the vista of tall gums and open sky, our Chapel ushers in stillness and wonder, opening our students to the illuminating silence of spirit that we hope will stay with them always. At Timbertop, everything we do – our academic curriculum, our faith in the expressive force of the arts, our Outdoor Education Programme, our community service – is ambitious. Our commitment to the vibrant reality and challenge of our campus, to our Chapel’s sacred beauty, to the rich, human quality of every girl and boy, runs deep.
Roger Herbert, Head of Timbertop
Corio, Geelong. Years 10 to 12. Day boarding and full boarding students.
Senior School At our Senior School at Corio we offer boarding and day boarding to girls and boys from Years 10 to 12. Over 200 hectares, our campus offers space and light, room to move and freedom to grow. Our students are young men and women reaching the horizon of their adult world. We aim to convert the tremendous power of their youth into a positive education that endows them with resilience and a sense of balance. We ask them to enter into the richness of choice we offer, to be unafraid of the weight of space they sense in the new territories of the future, because they have courage and confidence and clarity of vision. The desire for learning is a mark of freedom of will. We believe in the passionate impetus, the instinctive genius of youth, where everything is possible. At Geelong Grammar School, we are working beyond the moment and we believe in life’s infinite discovery. We want our students to honour the privileges that have been given to them, to be shaped by thought and enriched by experience, so that they enter the world with internal energy, fired by hope, lit from within.
The best education inspires and transforms. We are the largest co-educational boarding School in Australia with eight Senior School boarding Houses – four for girls and four for boys – and two co-educational day boarding Houses. We understand that our students are potentially all things, their strengths and vulnerabilities highly charged by hope and sensitivity. Our respect is strong; our expectations are high. We believe in the remarkable vein of quality innate to each student in our care. Our Positive Education Programme enables our young people to find – and sustain – in their own selves a dynamic rhythm: emotional resilience that sustains self-confidence; optimism that fosters persistence; adaptability that promotes healthy growth; absorption that creates joy. Belonging to our community engenders responsibility, engagement, generosity and respect. Strong friendships, understanding and acceptance are its rewards. Exploration of intellectual identity creates vital independence. We value the chrysalis of the young adult mind; we create vibrant partnerships between staff and students in the classroom. In Year 10, our students select from over 15 elective subjects, including Art and the Performing Arts, Languages Other Than English (LOTE), Sports Science and Visual Communication and Design. In Years 11 and 12, we offer the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) – with a choice of over 20 subjects – and the International Baccalaureate (IB). Our commitment to both programmes reflects the diversity of our young women and men and the multiplicity of life paths they will follow. Exercise develops the body; contribution to team sports builds collaboration, enhancing the thrill of the chase. Sport at our Senior School is compulsory; training occurs after school three days per week, with matches on Saturday mornings. Most teams compete in the Associated Public Schools’ competition or in regional, state and national competitions. A wide range of summer and winter sports is available. We have a modern and extensive Equestrian Centre. Our Handbury Centre for Wellbeing is a dynamic new space for team sports, individual fitness and managing good health. Our Year 10 Outdoor Education Programme encourages students to explore new avenues and learn more creatively. Camps occur twice per year and include activities such as scuba diving, rock-climbing and sailing. The three-day
Year 10 Creative Arts Workshop is one of the most important events in our calendar. For all senior students, the Activities Programme – which runs after school two days per week – encompasses a rich complexity of opportunity in areas such as Visual Arts, Technology, Service, Life Skills (such as self-defence) and the Performing Arts. We also offer Instrumental tuition in Voice and in over 20 instruments, as well as Choir, classical and jazz ensembles and Concert Band. Our Senior School Theatre Programme is colourful and inclusive. We believe in authentic commitment, engagement and activity that inspire real growth. Community service is central to our philosophy. We work so that our students will develop tenacious moral awareness, compassion and belief in their own capacity to make changes. The Lorne 160, initiated in 1991, is our largest fundraising event. Over 90 girls and boys apply each year to become members of this very special fund-raising committee; 16 are chosen. Our students’ work is extended by the Charities Committee, Sustain and Remain (the Sustainability Committee) and many other charitable projects such as Literacy Support, Migrant Support and St John’s Visiting Friends Programme. The Chapel of All Saints is our spiritual centre. As an Anglican community, we gather together regularly for worship during the week and on Sundays (for boarders). Wisdom, integrity, empathy – these are crucial to belief in what lies beneath the surface, in humanity’s own mystery and wonder. We ask our students to think further, beyond limitations, and to commit themselves to faith and truth. How our young women and men enter the world will be shaped by the humanity of all of the lessons we bring to them. At our Senior School Campus, our faith lies in the fluidity and flow of young hearts and minds, in the great possibilities in what they might do.
Charles Scudamore, Vice Principal and Head of Corio Campus
An Anglican co-educational boarding and day School.
www.ggs.vic.edu.au
Years 10 –12
Senior School Campus 50 Biddlecombe Avenue, Corio, Victoria, Australia 3214 Ph +61 3 5273 9200 Fax +61 3 5274 1695 seniorschool@ggs.vic.edu.au
Year 9
Timbertop® Campus Private Mailbag, Mansfield, Victoria, Australia 3722 Ph +61 3 5733 6777 Fax +61 3 5777 5772 timbertop@ggs.vic.edu.au
Years 5–8
Middle School Campus 50 Biddlecombe Avenue, Corio, Victoria, Australia 3214 Ph +61 3 5273 9231 Fax +61 3 5273 9356 middleschool@ggs.vic.edu.au
ELC–Year 6
Toorak Campus 14 Douglas Street, Toorak, Victoria, Australia 3142 Ph +61 3 9829 1444 Fax +61 3 9826 2829 toorakcampus@ggs.vic.edu.au
ELC–Year 4
Bostock House Campus 139 Noble Street, Newtown, Australia 3220 Ph +61 3 5221 7760 Fax +61 3 5221 7602 bostock@ggs.vic.edu.au Printed on paper containing 55% recycled content.
CRICOS number 00143G